Farmers, residents debate priorities for lakes

Updated 11:37 pm, Saturday, July 14, 2012

More than miles separate the rice farms of the Texas coast and the Highland Lakes, where the outward march of Austin is marked by each new house, strip mall and marina.

They are divided by how to share the water of the Colorado River, pitting agriculture against recreation in a state that values both.

Growers have turned on a new plan that would guide allocations in the lower Colorado basin for the next few decades, grousing loudly about water cutbacks to help preserve playgrounds. Meanwhile, those who live and work around Lakes Buchanan and Travis want guarantees of boater-friendly levels at the reservoirs.

The water fight reflects changes in Texas since farmers began drawing from the Colorado in 1885. The Lower Colorado River Authority built the lakes to generate power and tame floods in the 1930s, and the state's population has surged since then, with more and more people moving into communities that barely existed, if at all, when the dams were constructed.

The state projects the population of the lower Colorado basin to double to 2.8 million people by 2060, and it is clear there is not enough water to meet everyone's needs.

“The issue is: Texas is a different place than when this system was set up,” said Andrew Sansom, executive director of the River Systems Institute at Texas State University. “We have to find a way to equitably allocate these shortages in a future that is nothing like the time of its origin.”

With increasingly more straws in the river and Central Texas in the grips of a wicked drought, the LCRA, which controls the Highland Lakes, withheld irrigation water from one of the nation's most fertile granaries for the first time this year.

Rice growers are the largest water users in the lower Colorado basin. Their supply, however, can be interrupted during dry times, unlike the shares for cities and industry, which pay significantly more per acre-foot than agricultural users.

For decades, farmers received an unlimited supply of water once the river authority had met its obligations to cities and industries when the lakes are above a trigger point. The new plan would cap the amount for irrigation and, thus, keep more water in the reservoirs.

The LCRA has said the plan, developed with the help of cities, businesses, environmentalists and farmers, tries to balance the varied interests and protect customers during times of drought. Not everyone is sanguine about the arrangement.

Rice farmers contend that maintaining a full lake for its beauty and recreational use and allowing the water to evaporate is a waste of the limited resource.

“That's what we believe is happening in this plan,” said Ronald Gertson, a fifth-generation farmer in Wharton County. “It has gone beyond protecting firm interests — cities and industry — and is acting to keep lake levels higher for those incidental uses.”

Texas law recognizes agriculture, industry and cities as the highest beneficial uses for water. Recreation stands lower on the hierarchical ladder, below power generation, mining and navigation.

Still, recreation plays an important role in the Central Texas economy. Property values around Lake Travis totaled $8.4 billion in 2010, while tax revenues fluctuated with lake levels, according to a recent study by Travis County.

Lakes Buchanan and Travis were at 49 percent capacity Friday after a few days of rain.

Jo Karr Tedder, a Lake Buchanan resident, said lake levels are lower than at the same point last year and would be worse if the river authority had released water to rice farmers in the spring. The cove near her home has been without water for two years, she said.

“The only thing that will help us, literally, is rain,” said Tedder, who leads the Central Texas Water Coalition, a group of property owners. “If we don't get rain, it's only going to get worse.”

Tedder said there needs to be a rethinking of lakes as development anchors rather than just buckets of water. Ultimately, she said she would like to see an operating range that keeps lake levels high.

Farmers could expect an unlimited supply of water “when we had enough, but we don't anymore,” she said. “This is not 1938, and it is not the 1950s.”

The 1950s drought spurred water planning in Texas — a time when everyone owned a ranch or had a family member who did, said Sansom, author of the book “Water in Texas.”

The state has become more urbanized, and “we are seeing the pain of that transition,” he said. “We should not be surprised that development along the Highland Lakes has a greater economic benefit and more political clout than the rice farmers at the bottom of the basin.”

It is unlikely that the Legislature will step in and mandate specific levels for Lakes Buchanan and Travis, said state Sen. Glenn Hegar, a Katy Republican and farmer.

“People moved there and they understandably want to see a full lake,” Hegar said. “When they don't have one, that is a significant part of the economy. But you cannot turn them into constant-level lakes.”